Watch as we uncover the hidden crisis of Rural Homelessness
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00:00Rural homelessness is more hidden, it's very very distinct and therefore requires a distinct
00:24approach.
00:26No one should have to be homeless in this day and age, we should be able to meet everybody's
00:29needs.
00:31Counting homelessness at the moment doesn't reflect the problem as it exists.
00:38Rural homelessness is a vast and growing problem. Rough sleeping increased by 24% in the past
00:44year and without interventions and preventative services, the amount of people who are unhoused
00:48in the countryside will keep increasing. This is what researchers from the University of
00:53Kent and Southampton have uncovered with the help of organisations and charities.
00:58The research grew out of a concern that came from housing associations and organisations
01:03that work in rural areas who identified that there is a hidden crisis in the countryside
01:11with a growing issue of homelessness. We want to be able to highlight this issue to people
01:17who are taking decisions about what support and what funding is available in the countryside
01:23for people experiencing homelessness.
01:27Homelessness can be, well it is, a very traumatic experience in part because so much of our
01:34identity and so much of what is felt by a success in the contemporary world is tied
01:41up in housing and home and to experience that instability can be very traumatic for people.
01:49And of course the people who are at greatest risk are people who may be struggling to cope
01:55for a whole variety of reasons, for instance disability or poverty, most often poverty,
02:04but a whole range of intersecting reasons and that makes them very vulnerable and enhances
02:12the trauma that they experience.
02:14It's very difficult to find out what the scale of rural homelessness is but the indications
02:21we get from the organisations we've spoken to is terrifying. There is so much going on
02:30out there that we don't know about.
02:32They found that compared to urban homelessness, support and services are hard to access and
02:37often unavailable because people are living in secluded woodland areas. Those they spoke
02:42to said that the shame and stigma associated with homelessness in affluent areas is a significant
02:48barrier to getting support.
02:50In 2017, Frank became homeless after spiralling health and financial pressures.
02:55I haven't lived most of my adult life in London. I had some problems down in London and I ended
03:00up in Edinburgh and then I got visited with some health problems, namely a depression
03:05which hit me really hard. The reason for the depression was because I couldn't find work
03:09and the reason I couldn't find work was because I had too many gaps with the recovery from
03:13a heart attack and a bunch of other stuff. And in ten years previous I had built up a
03:17steady, slow credit card debt and it had gotten out of hand. It had gotten right up to like
03:23£16,000 and I was on benefits, no hope of getting any work. It just created this pressure
03:30chamber and all of a sudden I just had to get out. I would buy a cheap bicycle, got
03:34one for £200, I would buy some very cheap camping gear and never having camped before
03:40I completely adapted to being a head and away rural homeless person. But I would head in
03:45towards the woods and I would be looking for trees that were maybe three metres apart
03:51that I could use to set up my gear. So this is, if you imagine this is in a much denser
03:57wood, this is typically the kind of place where I would set up. I was looking for a
04:02place that had no paths, no sidewalks, not even any forest paths going through it. A
04:07place where other human beings wouldn't go. It was quite easy to get set up because I
04:12had no camping experience so I chose this to be my home. The system can't and doesn't
04:17cope with rural homelessness at all. There is no network, there is no system in place
04:23that will help people out or specifically in that. Because most of them are actually
04:28hidden and so these organisations, NGOs and governments, they don't know that we're here.
04:32In the countryside, inequalities seem to be experienced to a much greater extent. The
04:39difference between the rich and the poor is more obvious and more marked. We called
04:45this project a hidden crisis. We didn't realise quite how much it was hidden. It isn't just
04:52that it's hidden from policy makers' eyes but that the people who are experiencing homelessness
04:59in a way try to hide it as well. Unaffordable housing drives this crisis forward alongside
05:04the remaining effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ever-increasing cost of living. Roughy
05:09Place in Surrey was set up by charity Turning Tides to support people who are unhoused by
05:14giving them a safe place to live and allowing them to take their first steps out of homelessness.
05:19This gives us somewhere to be and stay whilst we are homeless. They help and support us
05:29in regards to applications to local authorities, housing associations and organisations like
05:35that to try and get us housed as such. The reason I've been homeless for an 18-month
05:41period is because my immediate neighbours ousted me. They took great offence to me for
05:48being LGBTQ. It's difficult enough trying to go about your daily business as it is,
05:56being LGBTQ, without any of the things or incidents I've had happen to myself. We face
06:03further challenges, especially when we're homeless, like the homeless hostels or places
06:09we go into. Is it going to be safe for us? If and when we're moved on from here, once
06:15again, is it going to be safe? Is the help and support going to be there for us? Local
06:21authorities need to take more and better responsibility, especially in regards to
06:25stop you from becoming homeless in the first place. Many of these, in England in particular,
06:32are around what's called section 21 no-fault eviction notices. If your landlord just feels,
06:39you know what, I've had enough, can't be bothered, I can't really afford to do this, section
06:4421 notice, two months, off you go. We really don't know enough about rural homelessness.
06:50It's been a really shocking experience to go and speak to people out there who are living
06:57in really difficult circumstances and to hear their stories and to really understand what
07:04kind of challenges people are going through. Karen and Helen spent months undertaking fieldwork
07:10to gather evidence around rural homelessness, bringing it out of the shadows. Now that it's
07:14clear to see, they were able to share these findings with local charities, housing organisations
07:20and local councils. When we were talking to local authorities, to government, they were
07:26telling us actually that there wasn't a problem with rural homelessness. We knew there was
07:30and actually this research has helped to spotlight that issue, to bring it to the fore and now
07:35we're talking about some future solutions to try and tackle the challenges that they've
07:40found as well. Having the data is really important, understanding the scale of need and particularly
07:46the hidden need. So services like ours might see specific issues coming up but we need
07:51to take a broader view to understand those people who are hidden in rural homelessness
07:55situations, what's going on for them, what are the barriers to them accessing support
07:59and accessing services and how can we tailor our response to meet their need. In December
08:042022, the government pledged £654 million of additional funding to local councils to
08:11prevent homelessness. I think the biggest key is actually it's ending that stigma around
08:15for us sleeping and it's, you know, the key thing and it's a message I think that gets
08:19lost sometimes is homelessness can affect everybody. There's a lot of education we need
08:23to do around that because you talk about stigma and about, you know, people who are in rural
08:27settings. It's that sometimes people are like, oh I don't want to approach them because what
08:32if they're dangerous, what if, you know, all of those things and that's a misconception
08:37so we need to break that down. I think the other thing is just about awareness raising
08:41so actually making sure people are aware of the different services within the locality
08:45so people feel confident that one, they know how to report things but two, that they're
08:51not coming from a place of fear, they're coming from a place of actually wanting to support
08:55someone. Yeah, but I think it also means linking in with some of those local community, you
09:00know, the church village halls that they have their own little community and they're quite
09:04often doing events and things like that and being able to link in with some of those events
09:08and maybe being able to attend and letting know, you know, how they can report homelessness
09:12and how they can help and like Laura said it can be any one of us, you know, there's
09:15such a thing as in-work poverty now and obviously where cost of living is going up and people
09:19can't afford their rent, any one of us is at risk of becoming homeless so I think just
09:23basically getting that information out there would really help. I mean, to be fair, I think,
09:27you know, local authorities work in a really challenging environment and I think I've never
09:32worked with another local authority who isn't doing all they can to tackle it. We can only
09:37work within the legislation, the guidance, the funding that we have and I think that's
09:44what local authorities do. It is really important that our politicians, our leaders understand
09:50that rural homelessness is there, it's hidden and pay attention because without that, yes,
09:59ultimately unattended homelessness leads to more pressure on our health services and our
10:05social care in particular but the main motivation is because it's the right thing to do. It's
10:12never acceptable to be homeless whether you're in a town or in a rural area.
10:20Now that the research has been completed, what are the next steps in solving the growing
10:24problem? I think this research is just the beginning. We have started to scrape the surface
10:29of a problem that nobody has been paying attention to. What we have done is started
10:35the conversation and what we need now is for government to take action, for research to
10:42happen much more in depth so that we can find out more and we need for this problem to be
10:48taken completely seriously but because it's not going to go away. There needs to be thinking
10:54about service provision that it isn't just urban focused, perhaps one stop shops, perhaps
11:00mobile hubs and to start taking seriously the problem of the lack of affordable accommodation
11:07in rural areas and our research gives them the basis of knowledge to really make a difference
11:14with policy makers and to say you can't ignore this problem, it is a real problem. It's going
11:20to take imagination, it's going to take a different way of thinking but the problem
11:26needs to be sorted and I think the policy makers are listening because for too long
11:31they've been in a mindset that homelessness is an urban problem but we have produced the
11:36evidence to say you can't limit it to that, that there is significant risk of homelessness
11:43in rural areas.